Stateline Western Australia

A family's nightmare dealing with Disability Services

REBECCA CARMODY (PRESENTER): First tonight, a Perth family's ordeal trying to find a home for their autistic son. For nearly two years the Duncansons have been dealing with the State Government's Disability Services Commission, trying desperately to secure funding to accommodate their 19 year old son Alex, but they've had no success. Theirs is not an uncommon story. Last year, more than 200 Western Australians with disabilties missed out on accommodation funding. Elvira Nuic reports.

ROY DUNCANSON: In terms of stress, dealing with bureaucracy has become as bad as having Alex as a child. it is just totally frustrating.

SARAH DUNCANSON: You just get drained emotionally and you just get sick of it and no wonder people give up.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): As a toddler Alex Duncanson was happy and playful like any other boy his age. But as he got older signs soon emerged that something was wrong.

SARAH DUNCANSON : Destructive behaviour. He'd beat himself up, he's strip off and run away, he would bite strangers that came to the house, he would bite himself.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): Sarah and Roy Duncanson eventually received the devastating diagnosis that their son, one of five children, was autistic.

SARAH DUNCANSON: Alex unfortunately is on the most severe end so it becomes harder and harder to communicate and harder and harder for him to understand the world around him.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): Alex's is a rare and acute case. Apart from a few words spoken when he was very young .. he doesn't talk. He'll never be able to work or live independently, suffers from epilepsy and needs around the clock care. Despite all that, the Duncanson's struggled and sacrificed for years to keep their son in the family home, but two years ago Alex's aggression got out of control.

ROY DUNCANSON: He use to come into our bed in the middle of the night and try to beat us up because he's so anxious and at one stage there I actually slept with the mattress to the door to keep him out but he still pushed the door in to have a crack at us. It was that bad.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): That's when the Duncansons finally asked the Disability Services Commission for more help and the real bureaucratic nightmare began. The first hurdle involved getting Alex into crisis accommodation.

ROY DUNCANSON: He's bitten us, bruised us. These things happen and you have to actually prove to the authorities that they've happened so we took the steps to go to our GP and get them to record that we'd been bruised and so on and so forth. We've walked into public servants offices and shown our arms with bruises all over them and they just say we understand your problem, there's not much we can do.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): Roy Duncanson says it wasn't until he filmed this video showing Alex roaming a busy street alone that officials acknowledged he was a risk to himself and others and placed him in temporary accommodation. He's been in that temporary home now for 15 months. The whole time his family's been fighting to get him into a permanent facility, and they're not alone.

SARAH DUNCANSON: The last time he applied for funding there were 270 people applying for accommodation funding through the DSC and only 27 packages so you've basically got a one in 10 chance and those families are not there because they've not in crisis so this area is really badly under funded.

ROY DUNCANSON: His officials status would be homeless within the care of the government.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): The government's latest figures also paint a bleak picture. In this year's first round of disability funding 257 people applied for accommodation support - only 38 received it. And there's only enough funding left in this year's budget for another 75 positions. Advocates for the disabled say it's not good enough and the situations isn't improving.

SU-HSIEN LEE DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITY COUNCIL: There is a lack of recognition of the rights and needs of people with disability on a practical level I don't mean in terms of words, there is certainly a lack of funding directed to disability services and that's certainly starts the ball rolling in terms of the problems that are out there.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): The state government says the criticism is unfounded and denies the department is in crisis.

TONY MCRAE (DISABILITY SERVICES MINISTER): I just want to return to the three-and-a-half thousand people who are provided accomodation support on every say of every week of every week of the year in western australia. Just this year in this state we spent 273 million dolalrs per year on supporting people with disability services.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): Tony McRae is the seventh minister to hold the disability services portfolio since Labor was first elected in 2001. Last month he announced a health check for the sector to ensure funding is being adequately spent. But the Duncanson's say anything other than an independent or parliamentary inquiry is a waste of time.

SARAH DUNCANSON: The waiting lists are long and there's just not enough money.

ROY DUNCANSON: There's waiting lists to join waiting lists. There's all sorts of criteria and hurdles to jump and you can't get straight answers. People write to you with what your entitlements are but they never eventuate.

SARAH DUNCANSON: A lot of promises but not a lot of action.

ROY DUNCANSON: It's not their fault, it's just chronic under funding.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): The Duncanson's need 120-thousand dollars annually to place Alex in private accommodation. Public housing does cost less..but the family says it lost all faith in that system after their son recently developed a genital infection that went undiagnosed by staff for four months. His specialist says poor hygiene may have been a factor.

ROY DUNCANSON: We have lost confidence and we've formally written to them and told them that.

SARAH DUNCANSON: We'd rather that he went into a private facility.

ROY DUNCANSON: We're a bit concerned about double standards, they require, they seem to require service providers that are external to the government certain standards in order to get funding but those standards don't appear to apply to the government's own accommodation.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): The minister has made this promise to Duncansons.

TONY MCRAE (DISABILITY SERVICES MINISTER): We will find in collaboration with the family a facility that's funded by the state government where alex will be looked after extremely well and the duncanson's will have influence over how he's cared for and they'll be satisfied and comfortable with that care.

ELVIRA NUIC (REPORTER): But he's refused to commit to the additional funding the Duncansons say Alex needs and is entitled too. His family says if the government can't help them now in a time of unprecedented growth and record budget surpluses, it never will.

ROY DUNCANSON: The 300 plus families that are in our sort of situation is not large by number and it's not large by dollars and it represents the worst case of the disabled that we're talking about so it's a question of whether we as a society are prepared to fund the most difficult cases and look after them.